Nurturing intellectual and social interconnectivity in a Business
Nurturing intellectual and social interconnectivity in a Business School seminar room: A comparison of outcomes for BME and White students Dave Paterson & Theo Gilbert Business School & School of Humanities
Problems with set reading for seminars or group tutorials What could possibly go wrong?
An alternative approach to managing reading for seminars.
10 British black 18 British South Asian 8 British white 5 Internationals (2 f / 8 m) (5 f / 13 m) (5 f / 3 m) (3 f / 2 m) 41 students/ 2 groups
Interconnectivity • Students were sorted more easily now into the most diversely membered groups possible. • Out of old comfort zones – and into new ones.
How am I developing my fellow students in these seminars? How are my fellow students developing me in these seminars?
PURPOSE Weekly: Each student had to find a source relevant to the topic of the previous lecture and be ready to explain/ share this text/material /research with the three others in their group that week in the seminar.
PROBLEM
Many were not sure how to research.
Smart reading strategies?
Weekly in groups each student: 1. Identified his/her source: author, year, journal. 2. Explained (not read) the article – 5 minutes 3. Invited discussion of it: “What are your comments? “ Comparison, questions arising, contrasting, trouble shooting, comment, evaluation. 5 -10 minutes
Initial Student Attitudes to the seminars’ academic demands ? Some BME takes: South Asian - m South Asian - f Black – m
S 1 - The smaller countries still haven’t picked up on it too much. S 2 - But you say that - ‘cause like I think Bangladesh, they’ve also brought out the RFID in their retail shops. S 3 - Just wanna touch on what you just mentioned about Bangladesh; obviously I’ve looked at another article based on Bangladesh. And it was an article, it was the RFID Journal, and the author of it was Bacheldor, and er, even though Bangladesh are a third world country, they’re bringing RFID systems into their army where they employ RFID technology to track soldiers and visitors entering its capital and the’ve. S 1 - It’s something that America took really seriously after the bomb – terrorist attacks and 501, where now they’ve started to use the RFIDs on the carrier things when they – so they track exactly everything that’s coming into the country and out of the country so they know that – S 4 - Is that in relation to the shipment? - the, the one point that really does, like, does scare me is that the security on it is not encrypted, or example – S 2 - Oh I heard about this as well – S 4 - Exactly, so I was reading from the article by S. Shawar on the ….
Subject Tutor was freed up to move around the groups: q Checking their sources – were they on the right track with source choices? q Answering questions. q Supporting students’ basic inclusivity strategies.
Inclusivity vs ‘collusion in the building of global elites’ (Turner, 2002) • No monopolisers (Yalom & Leszsz; 2005; Nitsun, 1996) • No alpha pairs (Bion, 1961) • Inclusive eye contact (Verteegal et al, 2002; 2003) IN THE FINAL, ASSESSED SEMINAR, CREDIT WAS GIVEN FOR THIS KIND OF PROACTIVE COMPASSION.
Qualitative follow ups: Experiencing the assessed seminar • I didn’t like coming – too much pressure on my head. • I had to step up my game
What did the inclusivity skills have to do with outcomes? • Compassionate inclusivity as leadership – see it, sense it, act.
The 41 case studies Students whose marks reflected a substantially better demonstration of critical thinking in their seminar assessment than in their written work.
41 Students • British Black students 6/10 (1 f / 5 m ) 1 m achieved less. • British South Asian Students 10/18 (3 f/7 m) 1 m achieved less • International Students 3/5 (1 f / 2 m) 1 f achieved less • White Local students 3/8 students achieved less ( f/1 m).
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